# ESSAY: The Big Beautiful Bill, Trump's Tax Immunity, and the Democracy Being Dismantled Piece by Piece

> On June 24, 2026, Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced a procedural vote for the following day at noon — a vote

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Essay
- Published: 2026-06-26
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/essai-le-big-beautiful-bill-l-immunite-fiscale-de-trump-et-la-democratie-qu-on-d

## Introduction: A Law Beautiful on the Outside, Lethal in Its Details

### Trump's most ambitious piece of legislation since 2017

On **June 24, 2026**, Senate Majority Leader **John Thune** announced a procedural vote for the following day at noon — a vote to open debate on the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act**, the budget reconciliation bill that combines **$4 trillion in tax cuts**, a **Medicaid** overhaul, border security investments, and air traffic control modernization. **Trump** wanted to sign it by **the Fourth of July** — a deliberate symbol, America's birthday. The hour of victory. The crowning achievement of a second term.

Except that in those same days, **Trump** abruptly cancelled the signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill, furious that the Senate had not yet passed the **SAVE America Act** on voter identification. And on the **Senate Finance Committee**, a silent storm was brewing around a very particular provision of Trump's legislative record: a **tax immunity agreement** negotiated between the president and his own **Internal Revenue Service** — the **IRS** — to settle a personal lawsuit for **$10 billion**. This is not an opposition conspiracy. It is the documented reality of a president rewriting tax rules to his own advantage, while his **Congress** tries to keep its majority from unraveling.

*A tyranny is rarely built in a single spectacular act. It is built in a thousand small decisions, each defensible in isolation, that together end up reshaping an entire system in the image of whoever controls it. Trump's IRS tax immunity is one of those decisions. Not spectacular. Not covered as it deserves to be. But foundational.*

## The IRS Affair: A President Suing His Own Government to Give Himself a Win

### $10 billion and a lawsuit against his own government

In **February 2026**, the news had circulated quietly in specialized circles: **Donald Trump** had sued the **IRS** — his own tax agency, run by his own appointees — to contest tax audits he deemed abusive and politically motivated. The amount sought: **$10 billion**. The institutional paradox was striking. The president of the **United States**, head of the executive branch that oversees the **Treasury** and the **IRS**, was suing the very fiscal arm of that same executive. It was simultaneously a demonstration of political power and a deeply troubling constitutional precedent.

In **May 2026**, the lawsuit was dropped. Not because the courts had ruled, but because a **settlement agreement** had been reached — an agreement that included, according to reporting by the **New York Times**, a provision of **tax immunity** for **Trump** and his associates. The **Justice Department** had participated in the negotiations. The **IRS** had agreed. And so the president of the **United States** had secured personal protection against tax audits that ordinary American citizens could never hope to obtain. The question is not merely ethical. It is legal, institutional, and democratic.

### The constitutional precedent and its lasting implications

What makes the immunity agreement particularly troubling constitutionally is the precedent it sets. If a president can sue his own **IRS**, obtain an immunity settlement through his own **Justice Department**, and have that agreement remain opaque and undebated by **Congress** — then the entire logic of tax oversight collapses for anyone occupying the **White House**. Future presidents — of any political stripe — could invoke this precedent to obtain similar treatment. **Trump**'s immunity is therefore not merely his personal problem: it is a breach in the edifice of equal treatment under tax law.

American constitutional history knows moments when decisions made in the political urgency of an administration create lasting precedents that subsequent generations come to regret. The **IRS** immunity agreement may well be one of them. The fact that no one in the **Senate** seems in a hurry to debate it openly is itself revealing: the dependence on **Trump**'s support for electoral survival has created an institutional code of silence on questions that directly touch his personal interests. That silence is more corrosive than any tax deal.

*An ordinary citizen who sues the IRS might win — but will never obtain a permanent tax immunity as part of the settlement. Trump secured in a few months what tax lawyers could not lock in over a decade. That is the true meaning of "the rule of law" à la Trump: different rules depending on who you are.*

## The Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act: A Bipartisan Bill Torpedoed by Immunity

### Crapo and Wyden — a rare accord sabotaged by an amendment

The **Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act** was one of the rare examples of genuinely bipartisan legislation under discussion in **Congress** in 2026. Introduced jointly by the chairman of the **Senate Finance Committee**, Republican Senator **Mike Crapo** of Idaho, and ranking Democrat **Ron Wyden** of Oregon, it aimed to improve taxpayer services, modernize **IRS** operations, and strengthen citizens' rights during audits. A good-governance measure that transcended partisan lines.

But at the **markup** in committee — the session for reviewing and amending the bill — Democrats proposed an amendment to **explicitly block the personal tax immunity** that **Trump** had negotiated with the **IRS**. The logic was straightforward: if the law aims to guarantee equal treatment of citizens before the tax authority, it cannot silently coexist with an agreement granting the president a special exemption. Republicans on the committee responded by **suspending the markup**. Not by rejecting the amendment — by halting the entire process. The **Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act** was left in limbo, a collateral victim of the question no one wanted to raise in public.

### Ron Wyden and the bipartisan hope that survives despite everything

Despite the collapse of the markup, Oregon Democratic Senator **Ron Wyden** declared himself remaining **"optimistic"** about the possibility of moving the bill forward. This optimism is not naive: **Wyden** has spent decades building bipartisan bridges on tax policy, and he knows better than anyone the corridors through which last-minute compromises emerge. The bill would improve taxpayer services, reduce **IRS** response times, and strengthen citizens' rights in tax disputes — objectives that even Republicans should be able to defend to their constituents.

But the question of **Trump**'s immunity has crystallized a reality that **Wyden** cannot sidestep with optimism: as long as the Republicans on the **Finance Committee** refuse to publicly confront this issue, any legislation on taxpayer rights risks serving as cover for a two-tier system — one for the president, one for everyone else. That is exactly the opposite of what the law claims to do. And that contradiction is unsustainable in the long run.

*The Republican committee members chose to protect Trump's immunity rather than advance a bipartisan taxpayer rights bill. That choice says everything: when ordinary citizens' rights come into conflict with the president's extraordinary privileges, privileges win. Every time. Without public debate.*

## Reconciliation 3.0: The Third Bill Too Many

### Cornyn, Kennedy, and the limits of the legislatively possible

While the **Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act** was dying in indifference, the **Trump** administration was pushing for a **third reconciliation bill** — dubbed **Reconciliation 3.0** — to pass other elements of its fiscal agenda that the **One Big Beautiful Bill** had not been able to include. The idea: use the budget reconciliation procedure once again, which requires only **51 votes** in the Senate rather than the standard **60**, to get around Democratic obstruction. The problem: Republican senators themselves were showing clear signs of legislative fatigue.

Texas Senator **John Cornyn** — one of the Republicans' key Senate lieutenants — had declared that the third reconciliation **"doesn't have much life."** Louisiana Senator **John Kennedy**, more colorful in his expression, had warned his colleagues that they needed to **"saddle up and ride hard, because we're running out of time."** These statements from two heavyweight senators in the Republican caucus perfectly captured the internal tension: a president who always wants more, and legislators who see the **2026 midterm elections** approaching with an unpopular fiscal record and a **CBO** projecting **$3 trillion in additional deficit** over ten years.

### Reconciliation 2.0 and the One Big Beautiful Bill precedent

The first reconciliation bill of the **Trump** administration — the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** — had already included **$150 billion** in new defense spending, permanent extensions of the **2017** tax cuts, and **Medicaid** reforms. The second reconciliation had added border security provisions. A third reconciliation would potentially include the **SAVE America Act** and other fiscal elements — some tied to the **IRS** immunity question. Each pass through reconciliation further dilutes the norm that this procedure is reserved for purely budgetary measures.

The long-term institutional risk of this inflation of reconciliations is structural: if every administration can push most of its legislative agenda through reconciliation — bypassing the **60-vote** threshold that historically requires bipartisan negotiation — American democracy progressively loses its mandatory compromise mechanism. What seemed a pragmatic solution in the urgency of 2025 becomes, repeated three times, a destructive new norm. And the next Democratic administration will use exactly the same tools that **Trump** has normalized.

*Kennedy is right: the political clock is pressing. But what he omits is that rushing a third reconciliation that senators themselves doubt will not produce good legislation — it will produce rushed legislation that voters will be paying for over decades. Legislative haste is democracy's enemy just as much as legislative paralysis.*

## The CBO Says $3 Trillion: A Silent Budget Bomb

### Spending the future to pay for today's politics

The **Congressional Budget Office** — Congress's independent budget analysis office — estimated that the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** would add approximately **$3 trillion** to the American deficit over ten years. Some broader analyses cited figures as high as **$4 trillion**, depending on assumptions about economic growth and the dynamic effects of tax cuts. To put these numbers in perspective: the **annual GDP of France** is approximately **$3 trillion**. The **One Big Beautiful Bill** would spend the equivalent of an entire French economy on the credit of future generations.

The bill's defenders invoke the **dynamic economic growth** that tax cuts are supposed to generate — an argument that **CBO** economists and the vast majority of independent economists reject as insufficient to offset the scale of spending. The cuts to **Medicaid** — which would hit **1.4 million undocumented immigrants** but also millions of low-income Americans — are presented as measures of fiscal discipline. In reality, they offset only a fraction of the **$4 trillion in tax cuts** concentrated essentially at the top income brackets. It is trickle-down economics dressed up as fiscal patriotism.

### The national debt and interest payments: America's invisible budget enemy

The **American national debt** surpasses **$36 trillion** in 2026 — a figure that would have seemed astronomical twenty years ago but is now so large it no longer shocks anyone. Interest on this debt now represents the **third-largest category of federal spending**, surpassing the defense budget. Every additional trillion in deficit mechanically increases future interest payments, reducing the fiscal room to maneuver for everything that touches education, infrastructure, and research. This is not an ideological argument — it is arithmetic.

The **CBO** operates in a difficult institutional context: it produces independent analyses that the **Trump** administration regularly dismisses as biased or built on flawed assumptions. But no one has produced a credible analysis showing that **$4 trillion in tax cuts** can pay for themselves through growth. The theory of **"supply-side economics"** has been tested at scale since the Reagan years. The empirical results are clear: massive tax cuts create short-term growth and long-term debt. The **One Big Beautiful Bill** repeats this experiment at an unprecedented scale.

*$3 trillion in additional deficit. Republicans who have proclaimed themselves the guardians of fiscal responsibility for forty years are voting the largest deficit in American history, smiling all the while. The GOP's fiscal hypocrisy is no longer a matter for debate — it is a fact documented by Congress's own budget analysis office.*

## Trump vs. Housing: When Electoral Politics Trump Citizens' Needs

### 358 votes for a bill the president torpedoed in an hour

The episode of **June 24, 2026** will stand as one of the most revealing sequences of the **Trump** method. The **White House** had organized a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill — passed **358 to 85** in the **House of Representatives** — that would have banned institutional investors from buying single-family homes. A popular, concrete measure that directly addressed American middle-class concerns about access to homeownership. **Trump** had himself promoted it in his State of the Union address.

Then, within a matter of hours, **Trump** cancelled the signing. The reason: his frustration that the **Senate** had not yet passed the **SAVE America Act** — his voter identification and proof-of-citizenship election law. In one impulsive decision, the president sacrificed a real electoral asset — a housing bill that his own voters wanted — to punish his own Senate for not moving fast enough on his personal electoral priority. The White House legislative teams, the lobbyists, the Republican senators who thought they had a record to defend — all learned the news in real time, without warning.

*358 votes for a housing law. That is almost unheard-of in the polarized Congress of 2026. And Trump torpedoed it because he was frustrated. Not over a principle, not over a legislative flaw — out of personal frustration. That is governing in the Trump era: the national agenda becomes an extension of the president's moods.*

## The SAVE America Act: Passing an Election Law Through a Budget Bill

### An election law inside a budget package

The **SAVE America Act** — **Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act** — requires proof of American citizenship to register to vote and demands a photo ID to cast a ballot. Its supporters say it protects election integrity. Its opponents argue it creates additional barriers to voting for millions of legitimate citizens, particularly minorities, the elderly, and the poor who do not always have access to the required documents. This debate deserves to be settled through ordinary legislative procedure, with hearings, expert testimony, and transparent votes.

Instead, **Trump**'s allies were seeking to include the **SAVE America Act** in the **third budget reconciliation bill** — a procedure normally reserved for fiscal and budgetary measures. This is precisely the kind of maneuver the **Byrd Rule** exists to prevent in the Senate: it is there to stop political measures with no direct link to the budget from being smuggled into reconciliation packages. The **Senate Parliamentarian**, **Elizabeth MacDonough**, would be called to rule on the measure's compliance with these rules. But the mere attempt at inclusion reveals the administration's logic: use every available legislative vehicle to advance an electoral agenda that open debate would make harder to adopt.

*Sneaking an election law through a budget reconciliation is an implicit admission that it would not survive open debate. If the SAVE America Act is a good law, defend it in ordinary procedure. The manipulation of parliamentary rules is the sign of a project that doubts its own merits.*

## Governing by Decree: When Congress Is Too Slow

### Trump reshaping tax policy without a vote

What **Congress** cannot or will not do fast enough, the **Trump** administration does through executive action. That is the unambiguous conclusion of the report by **TaxProf Blog** dated **June 20, 2026**: **"As Congress's tax agenda slows, the executive branch continues to reshape tax law through executive action and staffing decisions."** In plain English: nominations to the **IRS**, administrative guidance, regulatory interpretations, immunity agreements — all levers that alter the American tax reality without going through a vote by the people's elected representatives.

This pattern is not unique to tax policy. It is visible in immigration policy, financial regulation, and environmental policy. But in the fiscal domain — where rules determine who pays how much and who is protected from audits — this end-run around **Congress** is particularly serious. Because it touches the fundamental equity of the system: the idea that everyone is subject to the same tax rules regardless of social or political position. The **IRS immunity agreement** shattered this principle in a way that no executive order can undo.

### IRS nominations: political control of an independent institution

Beyond the immunity agreement, the **Trump** administration has reshaped the **IRS** through its personnel choices. Nominations to key positions in the American tax authority — commissioner, general counsel, heads of audit units — have followed a profile of loyalty to the administration rather than independent fiscal expertise. The **IRS** is a technical institution whose credibility rests on perceived impartiality: if American taxpayers come to believe that the **IRS** applies rules differently depending on political affiliation, the entire voluntary compliance system on which American taxation rests collapses.

This is not a hypothetical fear. Investigations by **TaxProf Blog** and specialized media document a progressive transformation of **IRS** audit priorities under the influence of political nominations. Audits of large fortunes — the bracket where tax irregularities are most significant in absolute value — have undergone directional shifts that deserve far more active parliamentary oversight than they are currently receiving. That is the work the **Senate Finance Committee** should be doing — and which it is avoiding, precisely because it would inevitably lead back to **Trump**'s immunity agreement.

*Governing by decree when Congress resists is every executive's temptation. But there is a line — thin, essential — between the legitimate use of executive powers and their abuse to circumvent representative democracy. Trump walks that line with the assurance of someone who does not believe it exists.*

## The Midterms as Constraint: The Republican Senate Watches the Clock

### A legislative record voters will have to judge

In the fall of 2026, Americans will vote to renew the entire **House of Representatives** and one third of the **Senate**. For Republicans, the electoral equation is delicate. On one hand, they can present the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** as a historic achievement — permanent tax cuts, Medicaid reform, defense investments. On the other, they will have to answer for the **$3 trillion in additional deficit**, cuts to social programs, paralysis on housing, and a president whose scandals — including his personal tax immunity — daily fuel unfavorable headlines.

**Ron Wyden**, the Democrat from Oregon, was remaining **"optimistic"** about the possibility of advancing the **Taxpayer Assistance and Service Act** despite the obstacles. But his optimism struggled against the signals from the ground: the **Finance Committee** Republicans had preferred to suspend the markup rather than vote on **Trump**'s tax immunity. As long as that question remains taboo within the Republican caucus, any bipartisan legislation on taxpayer rights will remain in limbo. And voters, for their part, will keep paying their taxes — without special immunity.

### The Republican electoral calculus in the face of Trump's fiscal record

Republican senators defending their seats in **November 2026** face a classic American partisan politics dilemma: distancing themselves from **Trump** risks mobilizing his base against them in primaries; blindly supporting him risks exposing them in general elections to independent voters worried about the deficit, **Medicaid** cuts, and institutional scandals. This dilemma is not new — Republicans in the **Trump** era have been navigating it since 2016. But the **One Big Beautiful Bill** and the IRS tax immunity affair make the equation harder than ever.

American voters in 2026 appear more preoccupied by inflation, housing, and health than by the procedural arcana of budget reconciliation. That is why the cancellation of the housing bill signing by **Trump** is so politically significant: it sacrificed what voters see and understand — access to homeownership — for an institutional priority that few voters fully understood. The Republican campaign message managers who must handle November messaging cannot be happy with that decision.

*Senate Republicans are trapped in their own logic: they cannot vote against Trump's tax immunity without declaring war on him, but they cannot publicly defend it without losing their credibility as men of the law. So they choose silence — and suspend bipartisan bills to avoid having to speak. Political silence always has a price.*

## Defense and the Big Beautiful Bill: $153 Billion for the Military-Industrial Complex

### A military spending package buried in budget reconciliation

The **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** is not only a tax-cut project. It also includes massive defense spending: **$152.3 billion** in reconciliation spending plus **$1 billion** via the **Defense Production Act**, for a total of **$153.3 billion** dedicated to national defense in the package. These funds cover notably the **Golden Dome** missile shield program, **INDOPACOM** investments, and priority military equipment purchases. For Defense Secretary **Pete Hegseth**, this package represents a strategic victory — defense funding outside the normal authorization process, delivered through reconciliation.

This combination — massive tax cuts + massive defense spending + social program cuts — is the classic profile of a budget that transfers resources from the least well-off toward the top of the economic ladder and toward the military-industrial complex. From a defense policy standpoint, the investments are defensible — the Russian and Chinese threat is real and the missile shield responds to a legitimate strategic need. But from a budget equity standpoint, financing these investments on the back of **Medicaid** and by deepening the deficit is a values choice that the **Trump** administration is making without naming the consequences for the most vulnerable.

### Medicaid and the 1.4 million: the human face of budget cuts

The **Medicaid** reform included in the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** would notably target **1.4 million undocumented immigrants** currently covered by the program in some states. The political pitch is simple: these individuals are not legal citizens and should not benefit from a public program. But the on-the-ground reality is more complex: several American states extended **Medicaid** precisely because uncovered healthcare costs — emergency rooms, untreated illnesses — ripple through the healthcare system more broadly. Cutting this coverage does not make health needs disappear; it shifts them to hospital emergency departments.

And beyond the immigrant population, the **Medicaid** cuts proposed in the **One Big Beautiful Bill** would also affect millions of **legal low-income Americans** who rely on the program for basic healthcare. The **CBO** has quantified these impacts. Hospital groups, including rural hospitals in traditional Republican states, have warned of possible closures if **Medicaid** reimbursements are reduced. These alarm signals are ones that the bill's supporters have carefully avoided discussing publicly during the budget debate.

*I support investments in Western defense — it is a necessity in the face of real threats from Russia and China. But cutting Medicaid to fund missiles is a moral choice that the administration does not openly acknowledge. It is buried in 2,000 pages of budget reconciliation. Political honesty means saying clearly who picks up the tab.*

## Tax Immunity in the Global Democratic Context

### What America's allies see from a distance

**America**'s allies — in **Europe**, **Canada**, **Australia** — are watching American institutional developments with a growing concern that rarely surfaces in public but circulates in diplomatic corridors. **Trump**'s tax immunity agreement with the **IRS**, the bypassing of **Congress** through executive levers, the use of reconciliation to pass election laws — each of these elements, taken in isolation, can be rationalized. Taken together, they paint the portrait of an institutional system progressively warping around the will of a single individual.

This is particularly pertinent in the geopolitical context of 2026. **Ukraine** is fighting for its survival against an autocracy that has eliminated all institutional constraints on its head of state. The **West** supports this fight in the name of liberal democracy. And in that same **West**, the world's most powerful democracy is letting its president negotiate personal tax immunity with his own revenue service, without serious parliamentary investigation. This is not a comparison with **Putin**. It is a warning about the gentle slope of institutional norms.

*We ask Ukraine to die for values that America is applying to itself with decreasing consistency. That is not a reason to abandon Ukraine — on the contrary. But it is a reason to hold America to a higher standard, and to not look away when its institutions wobble.*

## The FY2027 Budget and the Debt Spiral

### $1.15 trillion for defense and a runaway debt

The **Trump** administration has proposed a defense budget for fiscal year **FY2027** reaching **$1.15 trillion** — an unprecedented level in American peacetime history. This projection fits within the logic of military buildup against Russo-Chinese threats, and reflects the commitments made at **NATO** to increase defense spending. But it creates a glaring fiscal contradiction: you cannot simultaneously cut taxes by **$4 trillion**, increase military spending to **$1.15 trillion per year**, modestly cut social programs, and credibly claim to be controlling the American national debt.

The **American national debt** already exceeds **$36 trillion**. Interest on this debt now represents the third-largest category of federal spending, after Social Security and Medicare — surpassing even the defense budget. Each additional trillion in deficit mechanically increases future interest payments, proportionally reducing the room for essential public investments. This is a spiral economists have been describing for years. What the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** does is accelerate that spiral — using the tools of budget reconciliation — while offering the chief architect personal tax immunity.

*$36 trillion in debt. Interest payments that exceed the military budget. And we vote $4 trillion more in tax cuts. I am not an economist — but this equation is visible to the naked eye. There is no dynamic growth powerful enough to cover the tab. It is American children who will pay for this tax party.*

## Conclusion: Beautiful on the Outside, Corrosive Within

### The test of a law that reveals the state of a democracy

The **One Big Beautiful Bill Act** is a revealer. Not only of an ambitious conservative fiscal policy — that would be an unfair simplification. It is a revealer of what American democracy is becoming as its institutional constraints erode one by one. A president who negotiates his personal tax immunity. A **Finance Committee** that suspends its work to avoid discussing that agreement. A **Congress** that short-circuits its own deliberative procedures to meet a symbolic deadline. A bipartisan housing law torpedoed by presidential mood.

The strength of American democracy has always been the robustness of its institutions — not the quality of the individuals running them. Institutions are supposed to resist individuals' bad decisions, correct them, contain them. When institutions themselves become instruments of individual will, democracy loses its backbone. That is what this essay has tried to document: not a sudden catastrophe, but a slow, methodical corrosion of the checks and balances that make the difference between a democracy and an elective autocracy. **Ukraine** is fighting to avoid precisely that path. It would be tragic if its principal ally were taking it in the opposite direction.

*I end this essay with an image: the Big Beautiful Bill is a beautifully painted facade on a building from which the load-bearing walls have been removed. It is still standing. But something essential is missing on the inside. And when load-bearing walls disappear, even the most beautiful facades eventually fall.*

## Analytical Epilogue: What the Coming Months Will Say About America

### The Saturday vote and its aftermath

If the procedural vote of **Saturday, June 28, 2026** succeeds in launching debate on the **One Big Beautiful Bill Act**, **America** will enter a period of accelerated deliberation on its fiscal, social, and institutional future. Reluctant Republican senators will have to decide how far they are prepared to go to check a president who has transformed loyalty into an existential requirement. Democrats will have to choose between total opposition and negotiation on certain bipartisan elements of the package.

And above all of this will hang the question of the **IRS immunity agreement** — never debated in public session, never explained to American taxpayers, never subjected to a parliamentary vote. This question will not go away. It will come back, in hearings, in the fall electoral campaigns, in the history books that will analyze this moment in American democracy. And it will always pose the same fundamental question: can one build a fair tax system when the person running it is exempt from the rules he applies to everyone else?

*Trump's IRS tax immunity may be the most important untold story of this administration. Not because it changes the course of the war in Ukraine — it does not. But because it says something essential about one man's relationship to power and to the law. And that something deserves to be said, clearly, without diplomatic euphemisms.*

## Institutional Resilience: The Antibodies That Still Hold

### The judges, the parliamentarian, the Republican dissenters

It would be inaccurate to paint an entirely dark picture. Institutional antibodies are holding. The **CBO** has published its figures — **$3 trillion in deficit** — without softening them. The **Senate Parliamentarian**, **Elizabeth MacDonough**, applies the **Byrd Rule** without regard for political pressure. Senators like **Cornyn** and **Kennedy**, despite their partisan loyalties, say aloud what many think in silence about the limits of **Trump**'s legislative program. And the **358-to-85** vote on the housing bill shows that a bipartisan majority can still form around concrete issues that touch people's lives.

These antibodies may not be enough to undo the tax immunity agreement or stop the **SAVE America Act**. But they bear witness that American democracy has not yet lost all its self-correction reflexes. The challenge for the months ahead is whether these antibodies can organize sufficiently — at the November 2026 ballot boxes, in the corridors of **Congress**, in courtrooms — to maintain the essential equilibria. **Ukraine** needs a strong **America**. But strong in the true sense of the word: a democracy that lives up to its own principles, not just its defense budgets.

*This essay does not argue for America's defeat — it argues for its excellence. An America that applies to itself the standards it preaches to others. An America where the president pays his taxes like his fellow citizens. An America whose institutions resist the progressive corruption of their norms. That is the America Ukraine deserves as an ally. Not another one.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [TaxProf Blog: Congressional Tax Agenda Stalls as Trump Continues to Use Administrative Levers — June 20, 2026](https://taxprofblog.aals.org/2026/06/20/congressional-tax-agenda-stalls-as-trump-continues-to-use-administrative-levers/)

- [Politico: Trump cancels housing bill signing over election bill frustrations — June 24, 2026](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/24/hes-getting-pissed-trump-cancels-housing-bill-signing-over-election-bill-frustrations-00974648)

- [Ground News: GOP leader sets Saturday vote on Big Beautiful Bill despite Republican pushback — June 25, 2026](https://ground.news/article/gop-leader-sets-saturday-vote-on-trump-big-beautiful-bill-despite-republican-pushback_3c2aa4)

### Secondary sources

- [KPMG: Capitol Hill Weekly — June 22, 2026](https://kpmg.com/us/en/articles/2026/capitol-hill-weekly-june-22.html)

- [Boston Globe: Trump and Senate Republicans face midterms — June 19, 2026](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/06/19/nation/trump-senate-republicans-midterms/)

- Townhall: SAVE America Act — June 24, 2026

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/essai-le-big-beautiful-bill-l-immunite-fiscale-de-trump-et-la-democratie-qu-on-d